By David Rovics
If you look up “troll farm” online you’ll find an abundant amount of investigative journalism from every corner of the global press about this phenomenon. Intelligence agencies and corporations make good use of troll farms in a myriad of ways. The purpose of a troll farm is to use social media and other platforms, mostly online, to influence political campaigns and the opinions of groups of people as well as individuals, employing psyops tactics meant to harass, intimidate, insult, demean, spread false rumors, lie outright, disclose home addresses of targeted individuals, and a multitude of other related activities.
The troll farmers make excellent use of the idiosyncrasies of social media platforms — especially Twitter — to sow discord and doubt, to assign blame, to try to divide groups and movements, causing them to implode if possible. Troll campaigns target specific individuals or groups to try to destroy their careers or lives — campaigns that frequently lead to serious emotional problems for the victims, and occasionally suicide. This is all well-known to regular media consumers.
